Having to slam on my breaks (three times) on the drive to work because people are driving crazy.

Me before 10:00 am.

People talking in loud and energetic voices at 7:30 am. I always enjoyed my quiet mornings before most of the staff got to work. Only they have hired a very very very loud person for my unit who has my same start time. I miss my calm, quiet, start to the workday. Without it, it puts me on the wrong foot for the rest of the day.

Not being able to hear the callers with my headset cranked up because the loudest person now sits behind me.

Having tons of work but three of my co-workers spend half of the day in each others cubes chatting.

Nosy people trying to get into my business while I’m trying to get work done, slowing me down and keeping me from concentrating.

Callers who don’t listen. I asked for the city, not the road. I asked for the DL, not the state. I asked for the year, not the make. I asked for my vehicle not your driver. Basically, callers who answer my questions with completely different information. Are they even listening to the questions?

Agents who call in a claim, ‘to get it started’, when they actually don’t have ANY of the info yet.

People who ask me how I am after I ask how I can help them. That is not an appropriate response to my question.

People who assume I just asked them how they are when I never did. Clearly, they didn’t actually hear anything I had just said to them.

Every time work provides ‘treats’ to the staff, it is cake and cookies, despite the aggressive ‘wellness’ program they have going on. Wouldn’t fruit and veggies be better? Talk about mixed messages.

Callers that are clearly insane.

The company using the same three horrible restaurants to cater special lunches. The only saving grace is that the horrible Italian place does make amazing dinner rolls. But I can only have one.

Everyone thinking that I like chocolate because ‘everyone’ likes chocolate even though I’ve spent years saying I’m not overly fond of it.

Constant headaches because the light levels in this office are insanely bright and the place is always too hot. (Although everyone else thinks it is cold. I think they are nuts about that too.)

Hashtags. I don’t mind tags. I detest hashtags. (I admit, I may be sinking to the level of irrationality.)

Photo for a Halloween hat. She may look witchy but I have no proof she is bitchy and can’t make a case for the words being equal.

Callers who won’t let me do anything to help them but won’t get off the phone until I solve their problems.

Books that have plot points that are never addressed by the end of the book. Basically, every major motivating plot point in the novel I finished at lunch today.

People who use the word witch to substitute bitch. I know enough witches who are not bitches to really resent that usage and find it personally offensive.

You know, I just want to boycott the rest of the week and read a few books, watch a ton of Netflix and do some cross-stitching.

Lisa Renee Irwin went missing almost two years ago after her mom put her to bed and then had a few drinks. She would be almost three now. Half a year later, someone attempts to use a debit card stolen that same night on a website for buying false birth certificates. FBI thinks the baby is still alive.

So do I. Kidnapping babies to sell for illegal adoptions has been around for a long time. It is not as common as it once was. Now days, you are more likely to hear about people who kidnapped babies to raise as their own.

Still, after watching The Tall Man on Saturday, I can’t help but wonder. The thriller was well acted and I’ve seen worse acting and writing hit the big screen while this went straight to DVD, as far as I know. I never heard of it until it came up on my Netflix feed. I’m revealing the ultimate plot twist when I tell you that it ends up being about a woman who helps kidnap abused children and gets them to safety. It might not have been so objectionable except it wasn’t just abused children. It was children of poor families or single parents struggling to get by as well. It equated losing your job because the business closed to child abuse, as if you can control something like that.

Now think about it. There were a couple sightings of a man with a baby that night. Once I think was caught on video but maybe I’m thinking about a different case. Someone probably watched the family to get the pattern of behaviors down to know the best opportunity to take the baby. Imagine someone seeing a family where dad works the night shift and mom has a couple of drinks alone, after the kids are put to bed. Imagine the person thinking it was the perfect baby to take because the parents didn’t have an ideal, 8 – 9 lifestyle, and a June Cleaver mom. In fact, the person probably thought he or she was doing the baby a favor.

The movie came out after the kidnapping. But it glorified kidnapping children to save them. Even if the only thing they were saving the child from was poverty or less than perfect families rather than any real physical or emotional abuse. The reason it is an irresponsible movie is because this kind of kidnapping is still going on and should NOT be glorified.

Originally, I just wanted to look up any latest developments on the Lisa Irwin case. (I couldn’t find any) and complain about how the case just seemed to stop. I didn’t mean to turn it into a longer rant about the movie I watched a couple days ago.

I realize that I’m better off without t.v. when I see all the commercials I’ve been missing out on. I’m glad I’m missing them. They are bad commercials. Stupid commercial are even worse than just bad commercials. Like the commercial that looks like a trailer for a really bad Christmas romcom that is actually an ad for appliances, maybe it was Sears, not sure. And the commercial for a treatment program that claimed that because it wasn’t a 12-step program, it could actually cure, completely cure, addictions, just pissed me off. I think it was also faith-based and that pissed me off more. The idea that you can completely ‘cure’ alcoholism is just wrong.

I have to mention one commercial I saw for Law and Order SVU. It ‘looked’ like a static photo.

It is a post-Elliot add and the new new people are closest to the front. Well, except for Olivia. She was right up front. The thing that annoyed me was that Munch was shoved in the very back. You could barely see him.

Suddenly, Richard Belzer, the actor who plays Munch, shifts back and forth, like he is trying to fit better in the gap at the very back so people can see him. The image isn’t a static shot. Everyone else is just so still that it looks like a photo instead of ‘rolling’ film, so to speak.

It really bothered me that a character that had been on the show since the start was shoved all the way to the back like that. I haven’t seen it in a few years. At least not the new seasons. I’m almost glad. It’s not the same show without Elliot Stabler.

When they started adding characters to Law and Order CI, without Goren and Eames, the show was not the same. And as much as I love Goldblum, I didn’t like him on that show at all. I just couldn’t watch it.

In England, shows like this usually change out the lead characters every year or two. That way, the show doesn’t become tied to the performers. They want the show to be bigger than the characters. On this side of the pond, we get attached to our characters and very loyal to them. without those characters, the show becomes a different show and we can easily lose interest.

It is probably the one thing that really bothers me when I watch British shows like MI5 and Prehistoric. To much cast change over drives me bonkers. In fact, after one of the change overs, I haven’t watched MI5 in over a year. I can’t remember how many seasons I watched. 2.5? 3? Not really sure anymore. It’s been a long time.

Dreams are a strange concoction of events, movies, books, and random input in your life being sorted and processed by the subconscious. I do think that dreams can have meaning and messages. But these need to be interpreted in the context of your life, not from some kind of dream dictionary. But sometimes a dream is just a dream. Here was my weird one from last night.

I’m working late at work, to get some more sections done on a project. We can work up to 2 hours over time a week in reality. In my dream, this was not a limit. I get the impression I was making up for some time off I took. (in reality, I’m out of sick days and I took an unpaid sick day last week. I was also supposed to go in and work 2 hours OT Saturday and I was too sick to go.)

I wasn’t feeling well so I decided to take a bath. Our cubicles were bigger and for some reason, instead of a desk section behind me, I had a bathtub and t.v. I then fell asleep in the bathtub. (this weekend, I kept wanting to take a bath but took showers instead. Sunday, I went to take a bath and decided a nap sounded better. I slept about 5 hours. It was a LONG nap.)

The cubicles have an extra wall section that is hinged and works as a sort of door. I hear the cleaning crew come in so I get up and get dressed. One of the cleaners asks me to call his pastor because they need some money for gas and baby food. I call and leave a message.

It is very late yet there were a lot of people working. There was an entire accounting department (that doesn’t exist) that worked overnight shifts. (I suspect this is from me watching way to many episodes of Supernatural, back to back, on Netflix almost every day.)

I finish my tasks and turn around to find something on the floor inside my door. It’s a mystery note from the mysterious pastor saying these people are not who they say they are and they are trying to extort money from him. He had notified authorities but he was giving me a reward. Pinned to it was 50$. This seemed really strange.

I tuck it in my wallet with the rest of my money (for some reason, all my money is in my wallet and not my bank) and put my wallet in my purse. I’ve had a bad feeling about this from the moment they showed up.

The rest of the cleaning crew is leaving and the man and his wife come up to my cube and she is not Hispanic. (Okay, everywhere I’ve worked in the last 6 years has had Hispanic cleaning crews. I’m not trying to stereotype. This is just an element from my life experience in this city.) She was also not part of the cleaning crew. I’m feeling gratified that there are a lot of accountants around right now so I’m not alone with them.

She demands her money. I don’t have ‘her’ money, but I do have a note the pastor left for them. (Why he snuck in and out I don’t know.) It is just a folded bit of paper and I’m trying to find it in all my receipts and cash and stuff. She keeps trying to peek around me and into my purse. She can’t so she finally tells me to hive her my purse.

“No. I am not giving you my purse. You do not need to look in my purse.” (the only direct line I can remember from the dream. She then gets all huffy and tries to act all official and like she is going to try to put me under citizen’s arrest or something. (I watched The Watch, it was rather boring.) I know she plans to rob me. I just cock my head at her and tell her she isn’t touching me or my purse and that I am going to call the police.

An accountant, hearing the argument, stops and hangs out near us. She doesn’t believe I will call the police. I pick up the phone and dial 911. As I’m doing this, I notice there are several bunches of carrots on the floor. I have no idea why they are there. I’m pondering this as the 911 operator answers the phone and I wake up.

What an awful place to wake up. I want to know what happened next. I’m really confused by the carrots. I really just want to know about those carrots. Who care about what would have happened next. I was ready to thow down with that woman.

I must be mad because this doesn’t feel sane. I’ve got a Tardis project going. Friends are suggesting I do some Daleks a scarf like garland and make it all ornaments for a Doctor Who themed Christmas tree.

I’m working on designing a wedding sampler for some friends who are getting married in December. I have to finish designing it and start working on it if I want it to get done in time. I’m starting to cut it too close. I’m starting to chang Keep It Simple Stoopid to myself. Sure, I’m aware of the misspelling there. I don’t think it good to call yourself ‘stupid’ so I’m splitting hairs and changing the spelling instead. That has to be another indicator of my insanity.

I have three sessions of dogstitting this month and I took a trip to see my grandmother. My cats are going bonkers and last night, the first night home after 4 nights away, one kept stomping me all – night – long…… I guess he needed to make sure I was really there. At one point I put him out of the room. I then kept dreaming people were repeating things to me over and over and over. I think it was because the cat sat outside my door and yowled, over and over and over, for nearly an hour. I let him back in. Then the whole trampling me thing resumed. I eventually got up and slept on the couch. He can’t trample me there. He goes back and forth walking across my head and neck. On a couch, there is no room. All the can do is lay on me. At least he then sits still and I can finally fall asleep. I have one more weekend gone. They are going to go nuts next weekend.

At least the dog sitting slows down then. But I am also trying to work in more time on writing. I kinda stopped for the most part last November when our office moved. It was something I did during the down time that used to crop up for short periods during the day. It was a way to keep busy and look like I was working. Now I’m taking some of the time from when I would normally be keeping up with the blogs I read. So I may get behind on some people because I’ve got a fairly large number of people I really love reading.

Not to mention that I REALLY have to find time to lose the weight I gained the last two years. I was put on a blood pressure medication that had a bad side effect. I developed an insanely violent cough and it took forever for them to figure out it was my blood pressure prescription. In that time, it got so bad that any effort, including the walk up to my apartment, triggered coughing fits. I had to stop working out at the fitness center because people gave me nasty looks for going to the gym with a nasty cough. Then I had to stop working out because I couldn’t do much before I started coughing myself sick. Literally. By the time they identified it, changed the scrip, and my system normalized again, I had gained 35 lbs, have foot and joint problems, and a 30 minute walk will nearly cripple me for the next three days. But I have to get started and do something because most of my problems will clear up if I lose the weight.

And I promised my roommate I would make my lasagna. But tonight is the only night this week where our schedules line up and I can make it. Only I’m ready to crash. I didn’t get anything done last night because dealing with server transfer issues took 3 hours last night on SWTOR and I had to deal w/ Blizzard as well because someone hacked my Battlenet account and changed my passwords. I’ve taken a break from WoW to play SWTOR but I still don’t want my ‘toons robbed while I’m away.

I have two gift scarves in progress, one blanket in progress, and I was going to make fancy smancy dishrags out of sock yarn for christmas presents.

My brain hurts and I have a mountain of clean laundry that needs to be sorted. My cats used it as a bed while I was dog sitting and some of it needs to be rewashed. I also have an end table of books still waiting to be read, a pile of borrowed movies to watch, a huge queue of Korean films on Netflix that I have not watched because I never sit down long enough to read a movie. I keep trying to multitask instead.

All of this excludes a project I was trying to work on for work. Maybe there is a reason I’m so tired all the time. There simply isn’t enough time in a week to work on stuff. So clearly I MUST be insane.

I wanted to make this more general and less about me. But it is too much about me and I couldn’t keep it to a minimum. I blame it on sleep deprivation. If you want to know about it, or you just want to get to the part about ass dancing, read on.

It seems like today will be a very long day. I’m exhausted and back, shoulder, wrist, hand and ankles hurt. I feel like I spent an entire weekend gaming but it was exactly opposite of that.

My roommate preordered Guild Wars 2. This weekend was the beta event. But it took more of the weekend to download than he had left to play. He stared it Friday and it wasn’t finished until Sunday morning. Paying for a fast download speed is irrelevant if the server it comes from is sending at a slower rate and is very busy. This meant I couldn’t do any online games, WordPress would never load, and my email, home page, and FB loaded very slowly. Online stuff was out of the question. So was Netflix.

So I treated myself to a Firefly marathon Saturday. I also got a lot of stitching done. I got a lot done but didn’t quite make it to Serenity. Really great progress was made on the Elegant Pumpkins. Normally, stitching does not produce the same type of hand and wrist fatigue as gaming all day does. My my hand and wrist feel awful. Right up into my shoulder.

Which reminds me of something. Isn’t it odd how in formal writing we object to the incomplete sentence. But it is very common in novel-writing. And in natural speech. We say something, stop, and then add something to clarify. In writing, one sentence might give the impression that there was no pause or only a slight pause. But the reality of natural speech is that it is often a much longer pause. And novel-writing tends to reflect a more natural mode of speech than formal writing. We want people to really feel as if they are seeing and hearing the novel rather than reading it. Show us don’t tell us.

So, my weekend was a marathon of television and stitchery and not much of anything else. Although I did play two hours of the Beta Test before bed. Not something I planned on. But it was going to end and there is still no release date for the game. So I figured if I was going to try it out, that was the only time to do it. Still, it wasn’t enough of a gaming stretch to bother my joints. At least, it shouldn’t have been.

Instead of getting ready for bed and relaxing at 9:00 I didn’t get started on that until 11:00. My normal routine is to get ready for bed and lay down on the couch and watch a cartoon. In the past, this was not an effective ritual. At the time, I was staying up later than my already late bed time so I could watch an hour and a half of Disney Channel Cartoons. Emperor’s New School, Replacements, and Kim Possible. These were great cartoons but boy were they on late at night. Saying up until 1:30 am is not an effective bedtime ritual.

After they canceled them, I tried to find some online versions of them. I discovered a good reason not to make a teenage cartoon for middle school kids or younger too sexy. There is a massive amount of Kim Possible porn out there.

But I did find a show that worked great for helping me relax and I almost always fall asleep during. Not because it is boring but simply because I’ve seen the show SO MANY times. Shin Chan. It is amusing, entertaining, short, mostly light, and once you know the show by heart, easy to unwind during and fall asleep with it in the background. Eventually, I watched it SO many times I wanted a bit of a break. Invader Zim is not so go for unwinding and falling asleep. But Phineas and Ferb is fantastic. The show is cute, the characters interesting, the format is always the same, each episode is two separate segments.

It is perfect for slowing the brain down to sleepy time levels and drifting off in the middle of the program. I wake up later, momentarily, to stumble into bed and fall asleep before I know it, with none of the tossing and turning that normally happens. Like on Friday and Saturday when I didn’t have my bed time cartoons available.

Recently, my roommate saw that I wasn’t watching Shin Chan anymore and asked my why. I told him I needed a little variation and P & F worked just as well. He said I must be waiting for Ferb to drop his drawers and ass dance. No, I’m not. He seems to thing that is the entire purpose of my watching Shin Chan. This is not true. It is amusing. But I don’t watch it for that. Although the episode totally devoted to butt cheeks is one of the best episodes.

Mitzy buys some dolphin goo for her face. Shin happened to see the commercial for it when he was at home while she was out shopping. He overhears a conversation between Mitzy and the neighbor lady and totally misunderstands. He thinks his mom is planning to use Hima’s (his little sister) skin to replace her own skin so she will look 5 years younger and have the skin of a baby. He and Hima then have an ass dance dance-off in which Hima can’t keep up but she wins because her butt skin glows and shines with divine baby light. Shin sees the bag for the dolphin goo and recognizes it and remembers that the commercial says it will take 5 years off. Since he is 5, he will have the skin of a baby too. He can save Hima. Mitzy walks into her room to see Shin in front of a vanity pouring the last of the entire bottle of lotion on his butt. It is very very funny. I’m not sure my description does it justice.

Which brings me back to last night, where I lay down at 11:10, put on a 20 mintue episode of Phineas and Ferb, both of whom are too smart to find ass dancing a good use of their summer vacation. I drift of to sleep. Then I half wake up and go to bed. I wake all the way up at 2:00 am and can’t sleep. I end up being up until 4:30. I want to run screaming out onto the balcony, ripping at my night-shirt, yelling,”WHY? WHY?”, Marlon Brando style, which would look a little funny coming from me. I’ve been working really hard getting myself to go to bed earlier and get eight hours of sleep at night. Instead I had a 3 hour nap, was up for 2.5 hours, and then got another 1hr 45 mintutes of sleep.

I was glad this wasn’t a Monday where I had to drive to work. I wasn’t sure I was awake enough for driving. I was really looking forward to a good hour to 90 minute nap after work before gaming. But now I have to go do some emergency dog siting for a couple of hours after work as the one owner is out-of-town on an emergency and the other owner had finals and couldn’t get home between work and classes.

I’m glad I stopped at the gas station to pick up Rooster Booster slushy and two 5 hour energy shots. I just may survive today after all. Hey, where’s Perry?

Best Buy is closing stores and the question being asked is, “Is Amazon to blame?” I do not think so. I used to shop for my pc games there. They used to have 3 aisles devoted to games and one devoted to other types of software for a total of 4 aisles. They slowly started shrinking the PC gaming section and expanding platform games.

At the same time, they got rid of the value games. I used to go to Best Buy for various items. If I didn’t find what I actually wanted I never left empty-handed. I might buy one or two value games. I never left without spending over 10 or 20 dollars there. Now I go in and don’t find anything, I leave without spending any money. As the PC games is now down to half an aisle, I don’t even go into Best Buy anymore.

I don’t do platform games because the PC is a superior gaming system. The makers of the various Platforms have advertised so aggressively that people seem to think that they need these expensive machines. I remember when you could find the games made and marketed for both platforms and PC’s. But in the big push to get people to switch to laptops or notebooks or pads, more game makers are making exclusively for platforms and not for PC’s. There are still a lot of PC games out there, but the stores you would expect to get them at are carrying less and less of them.

As a result, stores like Target are increasing their PC gaming sections. It’s a pretty sad statement on PC gaming in general and game marketing in particular. There are a great many people who still prefer PC gaming. But some have broken down and gotten gaming consoles because the games they want are only available that way. Now you spend over two hundred dollars on a console that you pretty much have to use for gaming only. Or maybe getting Netflix or Hulu on as well. That is it. If I have to spend that much money I want it to do a lot more.

To tell you the truth, it really pisses me off a whole hell of a lot. But I’m at a loss on how to go about fixing this issue. So instead I sit and fume and Best Buy slowly goes under. Serves them right for carrying less PC games.